The MODEM Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art’s exhibition Untold Stories seeks to show, through the art collections of museums in rural areas, the values that institutions outside Budapest acquired between 1989 and 2024. Opening in the 2nd floor exhibition space of MODEM, the selection attempts to provide a picture for professionals and the general public of how the collecting practices of rural museums have evolved in the decades following the fall of communism.
About the concept of the exhibition:
In recent years, MODEM has placed increasing emphasis on collaborations with different cultural, museum or educational institutions. In a way, the current exhibition is a new level of this approach, as MODEM, through the Association of Hungarian Rural Museums, has launched a call for proposals, which has resulted in the joint thinking and work of more than 20 rural museums.
“It was essential that the institutions themselves define the image of the collection pieces they present, so we asked institutions for a list of approximately 50 works of art, regardless of medium or genre. From these lists, we selected the works to be presented. We endeavoured to ensure that our selection reflected the focus of the institution’s collection. The resulting selection also offers the opportunity to present, through the works on show, not only the mainstream of artistic discourse, but also diverse perspectives on local identity and cultural heritage. ” says Tamás Don, one of the curators of the exhibition.
The importance of the present exhibition is also enhanced by the fact that such a comprehensive overview of the domestic visual arts has rarely been seen before.
However, beyond the representation of the collections, we focus at least as much on the background work of collecting and the art institutions themselves, which we present mainly through infographics. In addition, the animations in the exhibition space provide a brief summary of the research themes surrounding the exhibition, which include the collecting possibilities of rural museums and the role of the rural museum system in the cultural policy of the country.
Institutions: Déri Museum, Debrecen, Dornyay Béla Museum, Salgótarján, Damjanich János Museum, Szolnok, Ferenczy Múzeumi Centrum, Szentendre, Göcseji Museum, Zalaegerszeg, Gödöllő City Museum, Gödöllő, Hatvany Lajos Museum, Hatvan, Herman Ottó Museum – Miskolc Gallery, Miskolc, József Attila Museum, Makó, Institute of Contemporary Art – Dunaújváros (ICA-D), Kuny Domokos Museum, Tata, Laczkó Dezső Museum, Veszprém, MODEM, Debrecen, Móra Ferenc Museum, Szeged, Paksi City Museum, Paks, Rippl Rónai József Museum, Kaposvár, Rómer Flóris Museum of Art and History, Győr, Szent István Király Museum, Székesfehérvár, Szombathely Gallery, Szombathely, Tatabánya Museum, Tatabánya, Tragor Ignác Museum, Vác